News

Brits ride the Vietnam tiger

THE road to the future of Vietnam runs out through the crowded suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City, past fishponds and farms, along a rutted track that turns into a tarmacked drive to the modern factories rising, cathedral-like, above the fields.

In a sense they are temples to Vietnam's new creed: globalisation. From these burgeoning industrial estates, products are pouring out to the world's markets. Young workers are flocking in from the countryside. Foreign firms are coming to buy, to invest and eventually to sell to a market of 80m people.

The strength and speed of Vietnam's emergence as a competitor to China can be illustrated by two furniture factories producing keenly priced products for every niche in the market. One is a huge, multi-storey complex, where reproduction antique tables, destined to sell in Harrods for thousands of pounds, await dispatch alongside countless items of top-quality home furnishings.